I've been playing with my video camera

Green Grass Jelly Drink

Previously on my blog I have extolled the virtues of grass jelly, the healthy alternative to raspberry or strawberry with their artificially enhanced red colour and synthetic taste.  Grass jelly was sure to be a big improvement on those with its ‘green’ environmental agenda.  But I understand that there’s a drawback and that was the lengthy cooking process that grass jelly in a packet required.  The instructions on the grass jelly sachet expected consumers to add the contents to water and boil them for three minutes.  This may well be too much for the modern consumer with their busy lifestyle.  It was certainly too much for my daughter Charlotte to whom I sent a packet ( on request I may add ).  When I asked her what it tasted like she informed me that she hadn’t even tried!  And that, after the lengths I went to to send her some.

Well now it’s all different because new, convenience grass jelly drink is available in cans.  I was excited by this find in my local supermarket so bought a can and rushed it home. The ideal mixer for one of my weird bottles of rum or fake gin I thought.  But now I’ve checked the ingredients and found synthetic sweetener and synthetic green colour and synthetic flavour listed on  the side of the can.  In fact, if you remove those from the list all you are left with is water and something called ‘gelian gum’.

So it seems that you can’t beat the traditional method if you want the real taste of grass jelly.  It looks like I won’t be rushing off to the post office with a consignment of canned grass jelly drink any time soon.  Sorry Charlotte.

A long weekend

Ho Chi Minh is a big, sprawling city full of motorbike noise and people squeezed onto pavements so, from time to time it’s nice to get out and see something of the countryside.  Last weekend was a long one, a bit like England the week before, but for us it wasn’t a wedding it was May Day coupled with the liberation of Saigon on 30^th April.  We had Monday and Tuesday off, so to make my escape I joined three other teachers  on a two day trip to the Mekong delta where the towns are smaller and the air fresher.  These trips are cheap and easy to arrange from one of the many travel agents in the backpacker ghetto of Pham Nu Lao in the centre of the city.

The highlight of the two days came early with a boat ride from the Saigon River through the city down murky waterways cutting through the surrounding countryside to the town of My Tho.  For once this was a comfortable boat ride in a speedy boat.  Most of my other boat experiences in South East Asia have been long, noisy and involved hard wooden benches crammed with too many people.  This one whizzed across the murky water even going past the university on it’s two hour journey to the delta.

The truth about the Mekong is that there really isn’t much to see.  They take you to every small scale production facility doing things to the local crops that they can think of.  So we visited a coconut candy factory, a nice noodle factory, a plain rice factory ( which was closed ) and a fruit orchard complete with folk singing locals.  On day two they delivered boatloads of tourists wholesale to the floating market to eat pineapple and watch the river traffic go by.  But the towns are small and quiet, with fewer motorbikes and cleaner rivers.  It’s cheap, relaxing and simple and very well organised.  We all came back happy and thinking about the next weekend away with the tour guides.